The Human Resources Development Minister, Arjun Singh, is back on his ‘detoxification’ mission after a brief lull. Singh is now in the process of removing BJP-appointees from the National Institutes of Technology throughout the country. In an order passed early this week, he changed the chairmen of seven NITs (Regional Engineering Colleges before they were upgraded). Next week, he is supposed to sign a file appointing at least seven new directors to seven IITs. All chairpersons changed this week had been appointed by the HRD administration under Murli Manohar Joshi. This NIT purge is the biggest ever carried out in the technical and management education sector. N.D. Gupta, former president of ICAI, has been brought in as chairman of NIT Allahabad to replace Hari S. Bhartiya of Jubilant Organosys Ltd. At the Bhopal NIT, Shiv Kumar Jhalani of the Sriram group has taken over as chairman from D.D. Bhawalkar, formerly director of an institute under the Department of Atomic Energy. J.P. Gaur of the J.P. Group has been made chairman of the NIT at Hamirpur replacing R.S. Nirjar, former member secretary in the AICTE. In Jaipur, Mukesh Kasliwal, Managing Director of S. Kumar, will replace former BIT Mesra Vice Chancellor H.C.Pandey. Former Secretary to the President, S.S. Sohoni, has been appointed chairman of the Nagpur NIT. This post was vacant and the IIT Mumbai director was carrying out the duties of the acting chairman. Similarly, R. Sheshasayee, managing director of Ashok Leyland, has been brought in as chairman of NIT Tiruchirapalli. The new chairman of the Kurukshetra NIT is C.B. Mathur, a retired Chief Engineer with the Rajasthan government. Of crucial significance will be the changes made at the level of directors. The chairperson does have a say in the policy-making of the NITs but the directors run the institutions on a day-to-day basis. Arjun Singh is contemplating changing a number of directors next week. There are 18 NITs in the country. The NITs were all upgraded Regional Engineering Colleges which came under the ambit of the Union government some years ago. Some sources said that at least six posts are lying vacant and Singh wants to push in his appointees at the earliest. Once these changes are made, the HRD Minister will have a firmer grip of technical education in the country. After assuming charge, Singh had gone slow in making changes in the field of technical education. He had replaced the joint secretary in charge of technical education, V.S. Pandey, straightaway but that was because the bureaucrat had completely alienated the IIM faculties. Singh also had changed the boards of all the IIMs which were being used in Joshi’s time to wage a war against IIM faculties. The HRD Minister brought in his own band of handpicked people on the IIM boards with whom the faculties would get along. In one of his earlier statements, he had expressed unhappiness with the goings-on at the All India Council for Technical Education. But he did not replace the AICTE chairman, R. Natarajan. He only asked him to initiate inquiry and purge the AICTE administration. Natarajan went out of office at the end of his term.
